Wednesday, January 20, 2016

When Your Dream House Is a Nightmare

I'm going through phases in my life right now where everything is changing and I'm learning so much. Things they don't teach in college (BUT TOTALLY SHOULD!) Rather than stick to ONLY posts like "What's on my iPhone" (I really should do a more recent one) and #ootds, I want to share what I'm learning with y'all--it is MY blog, after all.

With that being said, as many of you know, Josh and I have been house hunting for about a month now. House after house was too THIS or too THAT. I didn't think Josh and I would EVER agree. And then Monday afternoon rolled around.

We thought we found THE house! We loved it so much that we made an offer Monday night and it was accepted Tuesday afternoon--go us! The inspection was scheduled for Wednesday.

(Spoiler alert: If you didn't already guess it from the past tense writing, the inspection didn't go well--or maybe it did, you be the judge)

Today, I walked around my "dream" house listening the inspector list problem after problem--how dare he insult my dream house. I already knew where I was going to put the couch and what light fixtures I was going to buy. I know that's literally the worst thing you can do but, I couldn't help it.

My dreams began to crumble as I heard words like "powder post beetles", "electric not to code", and "you'll need to get a plumber in here".

My dreams were about as crumbly as the foundation.

Needless to say, we walked away from my dream house--me with tears in my eyes. It was so perfect, so charming, so completely WRONG. But it's better to find out when we did. It turns out, because of the beetle problem, the house wasn't even supposed to be listed!

If you learn one thing from this post (and I hope you do), I'd want it to be this: don't EVER buy a house without getting at least one inspection.

What did I learn from this experience? So much.

Don't judge a house by the cosmetics. (I don't ever think I'll get the image of the beetle infested wood out of my head)

Make sure your contract has a clause in it that says the whole sale is contingent on the inspection.This will protect you and your deposit. We were able to get ours back because of this clause.

All of the cliches. Everything happens for a reason. When one door closes, another one opens.

My dream house is still out there somewhere; I can feel it!

It's SO important to get a house inspection, y'all. I can't stress it enough! Can you imagine if we bought the house and were stuck with a sinking foundation, illegal (dangerous) wiring, and beetles that were chewing the house down to a nub?

We dodged a serious bullet today and now it's backing to the drawing board.